Tag Archives: Willie Harris

Sandy Alderson is working the phones this afternoon about Carlos Beltran. There’s a chance he could be taking more calls than making them.

“Carlos’ situation is well-known, and it’s not surprising given his situation and performance this year that a lot of interest has been expressed,’’ Alderson said. “We have not pursued that interest in great length to this point.’’

BELTRAN: Attracting interest.

As an All-Star, Beltran is probably the premier outfielder and bat in the trade market, so the Mets aren’t completely without leverage.

Where the Mets don’t have leverage, is that Beltran’s contract precludes him from being offered arbitration so they won’t get any compensatory draft picks.

The balance of Beltran’s contract is for roughly $8 million, so the Mets must decide if that’s worth the price to pay to gamble on staying in contention.

Unless the Mets are bowled over, Alderson said he’s willing to ride this out until the trade deadline, and even longer.

While the trade deadline is July 31, the Mets can move Beltran after that in a waiver deal. In that situation, Beltran must clear waivers before he can be traded.

Alderson’s stance is actually a good negotiating ploy. Everybody knew the Mets were desperate to deal Rodriguez, but by showing a willingness to wait on Beltran it’s possible he could force some general manager to blink and offer up a better prospect.

The Giants and Red Sox are the teams reported to have the most interest in Beltran. ESPN reported the Tigers might be players for Beltran.

As far as the Yankees, their primary objective is pitching. Even with Alex Rodriguez out for at least a month, the belief is the Yankees still have enough offense.

If the Mets go all out in the trade market, they have several pieces that could prove attractive to a contender, including Chris Capuano, Jason Isringhausen, Tim Byrdak, Scott Hairston and Willie Harris.

All have served a purpose for the Mets this season, but all can be replaced in the winter.

The .500 New York Mets are in Detroit tonight to face the Tigers behind knuckleballer R.A. Dickey.

Here’s the lineup:

Jose Reyes, SS

Willie Harris, DH

Carlos Beltran, RF

Daniel Murphy, 3B

Angel Pagan, CF

Jason Bay, LF

Lucas Duda, 1B

Justin Turner, 2B

Josh Thole, C

R.A. Dickey, RP

COMMENTS and NOTES: I’d still like to see if Jason Bay can right himself hitting second in the order. There’s nothing to lose. … Tonight is Jose Reyes’ 1,000th career game. The only player with more steals and triples in his first 1,000 games since 1898 is Ty Cobb.

The easy thing to do would be credit this afternoon’s startling comeback on Terry Collins’ blistering rant last night.

Maybe Collins shamed them somewhat, but it didn’t seem that way from the outset when Mike Pelfrey gave it up early. I think falling behind 7-0 had more to do with sparking the Mets than anything Collins said last night.

When you’re a professional athlete, sometimes it takes being pushed around to catch your attention, and that’s what happened today. Maybe for one day at least, enough was enough.

Pelfrey did nothing yesterday to prove he’s a No. 1 starter, but Carlos Beltran showed his mettle with a three-run homer hit early enough in the game to make a comeback a realistic thought.

After their early hole, the Mets played an aggressive, sound game, something they should be doing all the time. That was the essence of Collins’ message in the first place.

It’s an oversimplification to say Collins going off carried the Mets. If it was that easy, he’d rail all the time. In baseball, where they play 162 games, results are rarely attained by yelling.

Maybe the Mets were just due today. Maybe it was playing the Pirates, a team as Willie Harris said, “is not much better than them.’’

The Mets have had games like this before, but weren’t able to build on them. This weekend it’s the Braves coming in and we’ll see if the Mets are able to feed off today or just burp and regress.

It was humorous and a little sad to listen to Terry Collins’ post-game rant last night in the wake of another seventh-inning meltdown. He sounded desperate and out of control, much how his team is playing.

First, he praised the Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen for his hustle and hard play and said that’s how his team should be playing, then stopped short and said effort isn’t the issue.

Well, is it or not?

COLLINS: Where's that smile now?

He said his team played hard, but lacked execution. Passion, but poor performance … kind of like his speech.

Collins railing in front of the Mets logo wasn’t quite Patton in front of the American flag. You remember … Americans love a winner.

The problem is his Mets aren’t winners.

They are losing again and the problems are many beginning most recently and significantly with the bullpen, which imploded again. Over the last ten games the pen has given up 32 earned runs.

Last night a strong performance by Chris Capuano was wasted. Last night also featured several defensive lapses, two from Willie Harris, and the Mets’ first homer in 11 games.

Poor pitching, defense and no power won’t win you many games.

Clearly peeved, Collins ran over the same litany of issues that have burned and burdened the Mets for years. Lack of timely hitting; giving away too many at-bats; that no one player is to blame, that this is a team thing; not making the right pitch at the right time.